Games Design – Level 3

Unit 20: Computer Game Platforms and Technologies

Joshua Glaze

Assignment  

Brown box/First generation

The Brown box was an experiment made by engineer Ralph Baer in 1967 and eventually became the Magnavox Odyssey the first commercial home console ever. The Magnavox Odyssey is very basic compared to consoles now as it had no audio output and displayed black and white images with screen overlays being used to simulate color. There were a few other games on the first generation such as the Magnavox Odyssey 200, Atari Pong, Coleco Telstar. 

Atari 2600/Second generation 

The second generation of games consoles added many features that wasn't in the first generation with the first generation not having single player gameplay and only allowing one game to be played other then on the Magnavox Odyssey whereas ROM cartridges where introduced to store games for the second generation. The Fairchild VES was the worlds first CPU based video game console and also the first console to use a microprocessor, eventually it got renamed to the Fairchild Channel F. There where many other consoles released at this time with two of the most successful being the Magnavox Odyssey2 and the Intellivision. However, by far the most successful console at the time was the Atari 2600 selling over 30 million units. Also the Atari 2600 had many big name games such as Pac-Man. Due to the amount of third party game releases and the amount of games available for consoles it led to the video game crash of 1983. A massive recession in games leading to many companies going bankrupt and the video game industry losing a revenue of over 90% and ending the second generation of gaming.

NES/Third generation

The third generation of gaming consoles ended the video game crash with the Nintendo Entertainment system which then dominated the gaming market having very restricted licensing agreements with its developers. Also this generation introduced D-Pad controllers. Although the NES dominated in the United states and Japan in Europe it didn't have as much success as the Sega master system. The master system being Nintendo's main competitor in that era. This generation was also the first to feature RPG games and introduced some of gaming's most famous franchises such as Final Fantasy, Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda and Mega man. 

Sega Mega Drive/Fourth generation

Sega released the Sega Mega Drive known as the Sega Genesis in the United States. Sega created a new series to compete with Nintendo's massively successful Mario series, This was called Sonic the Hedgehog and it became widely successful being used as a mascot for the Sega Mega Drive with Nintendo and Sega competing and all other consoles not being as successful. Mortal Kombat was released on both consoles with Sega's version getting better views and outselling Nintendos due to Nintendo censoring the violence. Sega Mega Drive was commercially successful selling 40 million units worldwide. The top selling console of this generation was again took by Nintendo with the Super NES selling over 49 million units. with there machine having increased sound and video capabilities and having hugely successful console exclusives like Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda being carried on.

PlayStation/Fifth generation

The Fifth generation was the first to introduce 3d polygon graphics and introduced analog controllers. Nintendo and Sega no longer had the most sales with Sony's PlayStation being the most successful. Nintendo stuck to cartridges for the Nintendo 64 making many third party developers reluctant to make games for Nintendo. Final Fantasy VII changed over from N64 to PlayStation due to storage capacity issues. Nintendo dominated the handheld market during this time with the Game boy color. The Sega Saturn was dominated by the PlayStation for sales with it being the third highest selling surpassed by the PlayStation and the Nintendo 64 being first and second respectively.

PlayStation 2/Sixth generation

The sixth generation has the most successful console of all time with the PlayStation 2(PS2) selling over 150 million units and easily dominating this era of gaming. Its main competitions being the Xbox

and then the Nintendo Game Cube both selling over 20 million with the Sega Dream Cast selling over 9 million. Sony secured licensing for many games like Final Fantasy X, Grand Theft Auto 3 and Metal Gear Solid 2 making it outperform its competitors with the PS2 utilizing 128-bit graphics. The hand held gaming consoles massively expanded with consoles like the Game boy advance. Nintendo dominated the handheld consoles with no competition coming close to there success

PlayStation 3/Seventh generation

The seventh generation was started of by the release of the Xbox 360 which was released in November 2005 and rendered natively at high definition video resolutions, The PlayStation 3 came out in November of 2006 and had introduced HD movie playback having a 3D blu-ray disc player. Nintendo also released the Wii in November 2006 and this ended up as the top selling console of the generation having motion sensing technology making the console have a much wider audience then the other 2. Also the early PlayStation 3 models offer backwards compatibility with the PlayStation 1 and 2. Handheld Gaming was mainly dominated by the Nintendo DS offering touch screen technology however Sony released a handheld the PlayStation Portable which also did quite well



PlayStation 4/Eighth generation

This generation started off with the Wii U however it could not replicate the success of the original Wii and did not sell well.

The PlayStation 4

and Xbox 1 were both released in November 2013, so far the PlayStation 4 has been the most successful console of this generation with the Xbox 1 coming at second, Sony and Microsoft are both making upgraded consoles utilizing 4k graphics with the PlayStation 4 pro and the Xbox 1 S. Nintendo released the Nintendo 3ds an upgrade to there Ds utilizing 3d features in games. PlayStation also released the PlayStation Vita also using touch screen features not present on the original. However mobile gaming has made handheld consoles less popular with many choosing to play games on there smartphones.